Reviews on FIFA 18 Beta

EA sent the FIFA 18 Closed Beta invites from 2 to 11 August 2017 to the selected FIFA 17 player in the US and the UK by emails. In fact, although a few lucky dogs received the invites and became the first group of people who had chances to experience FIFA 18 beta, most of fans doesn’t have the opportunities. Luckily, a friend of mine received a invites and have played this game for several days and he told me his opinions on it. Below, I summarize the positive and negative factors of beta he told.

Positive aspects:

1. More realistic transfer negotiations. Transfer Negotiations are much more realistic. You have to scout players to acknowledge roughly how much they’ll cost when you negotiate. Therefore it’s a longer process in buying players which adds realism to the game. What I like is that if your first offer is completely out of order for the player then the club don’t wish to negotiate with you anymore.

2. Good and effective cut scenes. Them makes career mode much more enjoyable because you are actually discussing the price of the player with their agent/club representative along with their wages.

3. Buy out clauses. Sell on fees and bonuses is a great addition to add more realism to career mode. As a career mode player I really like the fact that these additions have been included this year. It makes it much more fun especially if you are a smaller team on the game who wants to make more money by growing a player through the academy and selling them on.

4. Breaking news section. Menus are similar to last year, but there is a breaking news section which tells you which players have signed for who along with them holding up a shirt for example.

5. Squad Hub. This is where you have all the players details in your team, for instance, their status, stats for the season (goals/assists), attribute growth/decline and financial, where you can see how much players are worth in your team, how much they are earning and how long is left on their contract. I find this a lot easier to know about my players because all the information is quite clearly stated in the squad hub.

Some aspects needing for improvements:

1. Press Conferences. For years the press conferences have always been the same and they have very little relevance to the career. I’m not saying there needs to be a cut scenes before every game because this might slow down the game mode however maybe before you enter a big important game such as champions league, Fa cup, Premier League rival you are asked a few questions in a cut scene maybe about team selection, thoughts on the other manager or opinions on the game.

2. Training. I enjoyed the training feature last year which allowed you to grow players attributes however I think to make it that extra bit better, you could include team training for a specific area of the field for instance attackers are training their finishing/heading accuracy/movement, midfielders are training their passing and dribbling, defenders are training their tackling and heading and keepers are training their handling, kicking etc. This would benefit all the players in that area of the field and not just the usual 5 you pick to train for the week. Also I think you should be able to train pace and strength if a player is young and hasn’t reached their potential.

3. Board expectations. Sometimes the board expectations are unrealistic for the team you choose to be. For instance I chose Newcastle to begin with and the aims were to win the league in four years? I found this very unrealistic because it doesn’t suit the aims in real life. If he aim was to qualify for the champions league this would be slightly better and realistic. However the short term objectives were more realistic because they stated I had to finish mid table and reach the last 16 of the FA Cup. Also when you’re a team such as Manchester United or Chelsea, you are asked to win every trophy you are competing for. It is very rare for a team in real life to win a treble such as the league, cup and champions league. Therefore I suggest the aims to be slightly altered such as if you had won the league in one season, they won’t expect you to challenge for the title again but concentrate more on winning the champions league.

4. In game indicator. Personally the white indicator which shows you where you are facing or passing the ball needs to be able to be hidden. For me this was annoying trying to play FIFA. It’s not the biggest issue and may just take some getting used to but I would suggest being able to hide this cause not all players would want it.

5. Difficulty levels. As a career mode player I am rather good at career mode and therefore play on Legendary however, on previous FIFAs I have to adjust the CPUs shooting, passing, goalkeeper, defending play to make the game harder for myself otherwise I constantly win games by 3 goals and it’s not a challenge and therefore I get bored. So I suggest a harder difficulty then legendary such as ultimate which you get on ultimate team or just making each individual difficulty that little bit harder.